This is a story I submitted for creative writing class. I would love to hear any thoughts, critiques, or constructive criticism. (And a suggestion for a new title wouldn't be terrible either!)

The End of the World

“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks. He stands still in the middle of the abandoned street while I sift through rubble and other forgotten artifacts strewn everywhere. Somewhere here, I know, is my old house, though even I am having trouble finding it.

It had seemed inconceivable that there would be a World War 3. The weapons used were the most devastating in history. Albert Einstein would be rolling in his grave with displeasure. That’s right. The nuclear bomb. Several, in fact.

It was stupid, really, to return to what I termed in my mind the “scene of the crime”. In truth, this area wasn’t the worst that was hit. My home was not the epicenter, but it feels like it to me. The beginning of the end for me. How depressing these thoughts are.

“Kristin, we should go,” Jesus says, looking around as if there was the chance of a passerby scolding us. “We should not be here.”

“Hey, Zeus, shut it,” I say a little too forcefully. I feel bad about my bluntness with the man. He is the only friend I have in the world now, and doesn’t deserve my biting attitude.

This place keeps me quiet for the most part, and I step carefully around chunks of fallen buildings as if I’m walking around headstones. I step lightly, and have this falling sensation in my stomach as if I’m trying to keep my balance on a tightrope as opposed to a scarred but sturdy blacktop. It’s hard to breathe. Not because of residual toxins in the air (at least, I sure hope not) but because I’m so nervous I keep holding my breath. Waiting for something, or someone. I’m not even sure what. That’s why I couldn’t answer Jesus’ first question.

I look back over my shoulder at my partner. Jesus is a really stoic and quiet person. Probably because his English is limited. I’m sure he’s wondering why he’s hanging around with this crazy white chick rather than caring for his remaining family members. He so dearly wants to return to the ones who were not murdered that terrible day, but he stays with me. He trekked all the way out of the Safe Zone to accompany me on this pointless trip. I had to give him brownie points for that. It sure was nice of him.

His name is unusual to me, but actually common in the Latino community. On paper, it looks like his is the name of a savior from long ago. When spoken, it sounds like someone is informally greeting a Greek god. Hence my earlier, “Hey, Zeus”. I admit that I pick on him, but it’s a love/hate thing. Although I’ve been very numb on the subject of love lately.

“There!” Jesus calls out, breaking me from my distracting reverie. He points to a twisted metal post. I could just barely read the letters on the sign: Bristol Street. My epicenter. It’s difficult to tell where the city ended and where the suburbs started, except for this twisted little sign. What were the odds of my street sign surviving the onslaught?

Even after their decimation, all the houses in the area looked the same. Where before they all resembled each other with postage stamp lawns and newly painted shutters, they now sit broken and abandoned with floors collapsing into lower levels and furniture resembling little more than broken-up firewood.

I see my car, or at least what’s left of it. I can see the taillights and the back tires. The rest is covered by my collapsed house. I cannot explain the emotional pain I feel looking at my home. My world, totally upended. All I could do was stare at the destroyed heap that was my home, frozen. Jesus says something, but I don’t hear the words. I had been expecting to find something, anything, that could uplift my spirit. To bring me back from this heavy depression.

I probably should have mentioned my husband and daughter who I left behind in the onslaught. I wish I knew what happened to them, yet at the same time I am terrified of the truth.

It was a beautiful day. It was early April, so lawns had shaken off that unhealthy brown and glowed with verdant life. Gardens were beginning to show activity, and the sun was making its appearance. It was nice to have an April day without clouds or rain. It was perfect weather.

I greeted my husband, Mark, at the kitchen table and snatched the newspaper out of his hands. “Hey,” he said, “I was reading that!”

“No you weren’t. You were just waiting until everyone left so you could check out the funnies,” I joked with him. “Were you going to the hardware store today to get some new gardening supplies? I really want to get started on planting some flowers in the front yard.”

“Always trying to show up the Jones’s,” he said, smiling.

*

The triviality of the moment sickens me. I literally feel myself gag before I could suppress the urge. How could I be so stupid? How could I not see what was coming?

“Kristin?” Jesus asks, edging closer to me. “Is everything alright?”

“Is anything alright?” I counter. “The world is falling down around me and I just can’t regain my footing anymore. I feel like I’m being sucked down in my depression.”

“We should go back,” he suggests. “This place is making you worse.”

“No, Zeus. I need to be here. I just can’t explain why.”

*

It had been unanimously decided by Mark and my five-year-old daughter Casey that I was to head to the video store for a movie and snacks. It was a Saturday tradition for us. When I was told that I had been volunteered for the mission, I asked Mark and a giggling Casey why they couldn’t go. “I have a report to type for Monday. Can’t you go Mark?”

Mark shook his head. “I’m playing the stay-at-home dad. You’ve been elected official go-fer.”

I decided that it was too nice a day to waste by driving the car the half a mile distance to the video store. I left my car where it waited in the driveway and walked to town, relishing the beautiful spring weather. It was incredible to enjoy such nice weather after the winter we’d just had. Hit hard by ice and snow from December to February. I was so relieved for winter to be over. I walked past the mailbox, looking at the potted plant holder I’d stuck there days ago. It was one of those long poles with a curve on the end that was intended to hold the handle of a potted plant. As of yet, no plant adorned the pole. I would have to do that when I got back.

At the video store, I immediately noticed something was wrong. It was eerily quiet in town, and the same was true for the store. There were only a couple customers in the store and two employees worked at the counter. Nobody was moving. They were all staring at the televisions located around the room near the ceiling. Instead of showing movie trailers, there was a breaking news report. I listened to the news broadcast. I realized the appropriateness of the dead silence in the store.

I’ll give the gist of the report. Reporter guy says, “The world as you know it is ending!” Reporter Lady continues with, “The government is doing absolutely nothing because let’s face it folks, they screwed up and now we pay for it.”

Okay, they didn’t actually say that, but that was how I translated it later in my head. I can’t remember the exact words anymore.

The store exploded with the noise of confusion. People freaked and ran out of the store. Everyone was running, dropping unnecessary detritus and booking it for the exit. I stood by the counter, still staring at the television. What is going on? My numb mind wondered. Did I just miss something? My confused thoughts solidified, and the run impulse seized my own legs. Finally a clear thought entered my head, and I started piecing together all these bits of information coming like sand grains through a funnel. There’s a nuclear missile headed for the United States. Run, and you might be spared.

My house now resembles a class project which was promptly stepped on by a school bully. I can hardly imagine how I thought this building could sustain any damage. Now it looks like it could never have faced a slight wind. Walls lean over each other to create awkward angles, the roof has been nearly flattened, and lumber sticks out like broken bones. Actually, the place does remind me of some unfortunate road kill.

Against my better judgment, I crawl under one of these collapsed walls that hangs over the driveway and “enter” the house. There is nothing recognizable anymore except for a picture frame smashed on the pavement in front of me. I crawl towards it, risking getting my knees screwed-up because of the nails and glass covering the ground. When I get close enough, I pick up the frame and look at the scratched picture inside. It’s a goofy snapshot that Mark took of Casey and me at the park. We’re both on the swings, grinning broadly and having a grand time. I separate the picture from it’s suffocating frame, fold it up, and put it in my pocket.

I think about crawling further, seeing what other sentimental treasures I can discover, but it’s a stupid idea. Jesus is waiting for me to return with him to the Safe Zone with the others.

I am about to leave when something shiny catches my eye. Through a crack in a wall (ceiling?) overhead comes a shaft of light that illuminates an area ahead; the rest of the driveway. The shiny something is a hubcap. Buried under the house in front of my car is the family car, the SUV. Seeing this car is like a death sentence, and like the moment at the video store I am frozen in place as I stare.

This was it. The thing I was searching for. Both cars were still here. So this must mean that Mark and Casey had no chance of escaping. They never had a chance.

Finally, after a piteous moment where I cried my heart out, I crawled back out into the sunlight. Jesus is still waiting, the ever-patient Spanish man.

“They really are gone,” I tell him. The statement is more for my benefit than his. I need to admit it out loud. I need to own this pain, then learn to control it. But how can I focus or care about anything else when I know my family is gone?

*

I’d gotten out of the store but I couldn’t seem to understand what to do. What could I do? People up and down the street were running to whatever was available and started driving away. “Where is everyone going?” I shouted out.

Somebody heard me. It’s Mrs. Callow, a woman who lives on my street. She and her elderly husband were getting into their car. “Everyone’s heading west,” she shouted out the car window. “We heard it was the only possible way of avoiding it.”

I noticed vaguely that she used the word ‘it’ rather than mentioning the missile. Must be some psychological thing where she can’t say the thing that troubles her out loud. She and her husband drove off, leaving me on the sidewalk. A surprising number of people have fled by this point, the bleak message having reached everyone in town, it seemed.

*

Bad news travels fast, after all.

“I have to get home,” I decided, starting back down the street, jogging. I knew I had a half a mile to jog, but I must meet up with my family and let Mark and little Casey know what’s going on.

“You! Miss!” shouted an accented voice. A truck pulled over to the side of the road, right next to me. A bronze-skinned Spanish woman is talking to me out the passenger window. “You must come with us! It’s coming!”

“I have to get home!” I told her, even though she was getting out of the truck and motioning for me to enter. “They need to know!”

She realized that rescuing me wasn’t working because I wasn’t not complying. She looked to the sky. I’m not quite sure if she was searching the sky for a deadly missile or pleading to the Lord for an answer. She came up with a solution. She motioned for her two lanky sons in the back seat to get out.

They dragged me into the truck. I was actually kicking and screaming. “You don’t understand. I have to get home! My husband and daughter are back there!”

“They will know already. Everyone is evacuating,” the woman explained, settling herself back into the front seat. I was squished between her two sons in the back seat. The husband gave no warning when he put the truck back into drive and tore out of town. It’s a good thing there are no speed limits when you know the world is about to end.

*
Jesus and I make it back to what we call the Safe Zone. This area is outside of the Impact Zone where the missile struck and of the area around it that was destroyed. Here there is an abandoned factory where we roost in like chickens. There are at least a hundred people who have sought this temporary sanctuary. Some from my own town, others from the nearby city and other surrounding towns. We are black, white, Hispanic. Some of us can’t speak English, while some of us speak too much, causing other survivors to get more nervous.

It has been weeks since the missile struck, and we’ve had a hard time of it just trying to continue our survival. Teams of people go out during the day to raid stores and homes that have been forgotten, and they return later on to share their finds with the rest of our hodge-podge community. I am grateful to be here, and I also hate being here. All I could think about during these past few weeks were what happened to Mark and Casey. I guess now that I know the truth, I will try as hard as I can to not accept it.

Jesus’ mother, Paz, greets us. “Good thing you too didn’t stay out too long!” she said, “We are all about to leave.”

“Leave?” I asked, “Where are we going?”

Rogelio, Jesus’ father, explains, “We are meeting other survivors. We got a message over the radio from another group of people. We will head north to meet with these other survivors.”

It was probably a good plan. Our little community in the warehouse was using up all available resources in the area. We would have to move soon anyway.

The community puts together a sort of make-shift caravan, utilizing every vehicle available that hasn’t yet run out of gas. I help a group of people who load what supplies we have: some first-aid kits, duffel bags and backpacks stuffed with clothes, and non-perishable foods are the most common things we pack. These are things people had time to grab before the mad dash away from impending doom.

Soon the caravan is up and running, with about twenty vehicles in various makes and models pulling out of the parking lot of the warehouse. I travel with Jesus’ family in the truck that leads the caravan. It turns out that the freeway is blocked by an overturned tractor trailer. This was beginning to make me feel uneasy. The thought crosses my mind that the dead end is a sign that we should have stayed. Instead, the caravan leader, Rogelio, turns around and heads back into town. We would pass my house, and I dread seeing it again.

We travel down Bristol Street. I shield my face with my hands and wait for what feels like years. Jesus, the ever-quiet person, doesn’t ask me what I’m doing. He understands.

Like we are getting nearer to a fire, I can feel the presence of my home looming ever closer. This is it. I have to look. When I succumb to the urge to peek through my fingers, I shout, “Stop the truck!” Rogelio, shocked by my outburst, slams on the brakes. I wrestle my way out of the back seat and out the side door, stumbling when I hit the pavement but still running. I reach the metal pole next to the mailbox where I was going to hang that potted plant. Hanging from the crook of the pole is a golden chain. At the end of the chain is a heart-shaped locket. This necklace belonged to Casey, and either she had placed it here weeks ago, before the missile, or I had missed seeing it when I visited earlier.

I take the necklace and return to the truck, somewhat aware that everyone in the caravan is staring at me. I climb back into the back seat and do not look out the window anymore. I can only stare at the locket with its pristine and perfect shape. I try forever to get the darn thing open, but I’d bitten my nails so much during the last few weeks that I can’t get it opened. Asking someone else to do it for me is not an option. I will have to open it by myself.

Hours later, our caravan reaches the meeting point. Thousands of people crowd a baseball and soccer field next to an elementary school. There are tents sent up, some providing healthcare while others serve food. It seems that more than one mini-community had responded to the invitation over the radio.

Our community merge with the growing crowd., but I stay on the outskirts and search desperately at the thousands of faces in front of me. Jesus stays by my side, finally speaking after a two minute silence. “You found what you were looking for,” he says wisely.

“That’s right,” I answer, smiling for the first time in weeks. I hold up the fragile chain and dangle the locket in the air. “I found my hope. They’re here somewhere, and by God I’m going to find them.”